Last week, we swam a few laps in the Lake of Fire to whip a couple of low-priced 850s (Volvo and BMW) into quasi-daily-driver condition. It's a real hassle when you're in the Lake of Fire and your toolbox sinks to the bottom, but it's all worth it when your Hell Project is ready to go . . . or so they say, because most Hell Projects involve a certain boulder/hill combo. If you're going to take another shot at rolling the rock up the hill, perhaps it's best to do so with a car that has some history.

Some folks would say that a historically significant vehicle is one that spawned massive change through its revolutionary attributes--say, the Model T Ford with its cheap price tag, or the Austin Mini with its transverse front-wheel-drive setup. But we in the Hell Garage tend to have more appreciation for the appendixes and epilogues of car history. For that reason, the cars that limped off the assembly line during the last couple of years of a doomed car company during the postwar years really get our interest, and that's why your eternity in the Hell Garage needs to be spent with one of the last of Henry J's post-Liberty-Ship dream cars, or maybe a branding-muddled "Packardbaker" from the downward-spiral endgame of Packard's once-glorious history.

It's a 1957 Packard Clipper, ready to be shunned by Packard fans and Studebaker fanatics alike.

Packard once went toe-to-toe with the likes of Cadillac and Lincoln, but the marque's prestige went into a gradual decline during the Great Depression and didn't bounce back much after World War II. Still, Packards of the immediate postwar era were still pretty serious machines, in spite of their lack of an overhead-valve V8 prior to the 1955 model year. Collectors love many of the big straight-eight machines of the period (for the complete story of Packard's final decade, check out Ate Up With Motor's excellent piece on the subject).

If you're going to slave for years in the Hell Garage, however, your suffering will be worth more (somehow) if you choose a Packard that nobody wants. That's right, we're talking about the infamous Packard-badged Studebaker Presidents of the ill-fated Studebaker-Packard Corp., built during the decline-and-fall 1957 and 1958 model years. The Packard fanatics will scorn you, and the Studebaker fanatics will treat you like the weird paroled-for-manslaughter uncle at the family reunion, but you'll know in your heart that buying this 1957 Packard Clipper station wagon in Nevada (go here if the listing disappears) was one of the most incomprehensible smartest moves you've ever made.

The seller will take the "Best Reasonable Offer" for the car, which boasts some pretty impressive credentials beyond just being a super-rare Packardbaker wagon. First off, it has been in the seller's family since 1963. Before that, it may well have been owned by a "Cowboy Star." If that's not provenance, I don't know what is. The seller claims the car is rust-free, which would normally inspire a snort of derision but is quite believable for a machine from dry-as-dust Nevada. This also means that the interior resembles those of the cars that got blasted by nukes during Operation Plumbbob at the nearby Nevada Test Site, i.e., all upholstery baked to crumbly powder. The seller's description doesn't get into much detail ("The car needs to be restored. This car is complete" is about the extent of it), but how hard could it be? Recreate restore the interior, fix everything mechanical, straighten out the body, shoot some paint, all that stuff--how hard could it be?

Kaiser Manhattan, anyone? In the Project Car Hell garage, all orphans are welcome!

In many ways, the story of Kaiser Motors is even more depressing than that of Packard. Kaiser saved the world during World War II by cranking out cargo ships in as little as four days apiece, then roared into the postwar American world with a plan to beat the Detroit Big Three car companies at their own game. Kaiser cars would be affordable and futuristic, and everyone would buy them. Well, things didn't really work out that way, and Kaiser-Frazer was on the ropes by the early 1950s.

The last Kaiser cars sold in the United States were 1955-model-year machines, with most of the production run getting shipped to Argentina as knock-down kits. Oh yes, they're super-rare, which should equate to super-costly, right? Shockingly, no! We've found this 1955 Kaiser Manhattan sedan (go here if the listing disappears) in the nonrusty Southern California desert for just $1,500, and all it needs is absolutely everything a few things fixed to be a solid runner. It hasn't run for 20-plus years (in Craigslist-ese, that means 40-plus years), but it appears that most of the glass is there, some of the trim is intact, and the six-banger under the hood might not be frozen solid. You might be able to find some NOS pieces in Argentina, or you could have them carved out of pure dollars at your favorite machine shop. Either way, you'll end up with a piece of history that just about nobody any savvy automotive historian will appreciate.